Thursday, 26 May 2011

I blogged a few weeks ago about the success of David Rogers: the Chair of the GA's Secondary Committee in the Jamie Oliver Dream Teachers competition on YouTube...
You can watch his £10 000 winning video below - it's now been seen over 13000 times !

Also listen to him from earlier today on BBC Radio SOLENT - via Audioboo....

Thursday, 19 May 2011

GA subscribers to Teaching Geography have the chance to use a really well put together unit of work which has been written by Suzie Farmer.
It is called "Planning for Progression: making sense of famine and feast" and explores issues of food production.
There are downloadable documents on the GA website which accompany the article.

Wednesday, 18 May 2011

For a food-related project I'm planning...
Everything I bought on my last trip to the supermarket.... (I went to Waitrose on this occasion, but normally go a lot more down-market...)

Could be used to explore issues like:

- sourcing: local or worldwide
- production methods: freedom foods, organic, Red Tractor, PGI
- packaging
- health: convenience or home cooking ingredients
- seasonality (they were bought in May... which of them are "out of season")

Saturday, 14 May 2011

All schools that lie within the newly designated South Downs National Park will soon receive an education pack which was put together by the Geographical Association.
It features a range of activities to explore the geography of the National Park, and the idea of landscape as a palimpsest...
It matches nicely with some of the ideas in my KS3 Toolkit: "Look at it this Way", which is available from the GA's online shop.

Wednesday, 11 May 2011

You have a chance to book to take part in the first of the Geographical Association's new ONLINE CPD courses.These use a special web interface to allow you to listen to the presenter, watch a range of images and resources, and carry out a range of tasks, as well as asking and answering questions and taking part in discussions.

There's a lot of unambitious geography around...Noel Jenkins has never been guilty of that.
His geography has always pushed the boundaries, and developed critical and creative thinking in the students fortunate enough to have him as their teacher.

His latest project is a genius piece of guerilla geography and place-based geography, which re-invents the idea of pupil participation in the planning process, and the idea of 'localism', as well as local geographies, urban geography and local map skills.

WELLINGTON PLANNINGhosts information about some proposed planning decisions that Noel and students have developed.
They are proposed changes to buildings in Wellington, Somerset.

Here, for example, is the planning notice for Waitrose: this will be turned into an alternative usage...

The proposed changes have been developed with local knowledge very much in mind, and that adds an extra dimension to the project.
There have apparently been some "interesting responses" from people who have come across the notices.